Biological applications of infrared (IR) spectroscopy have evolved substantially over the past several decades. Current efforts seek to understand information encoded by chemical bond changes that are observable in, and correlate with, higher order processes including, e.g. inflammation, proliferation, cell death, and cytostatic effects. The full potential of FTIR spectroscopy as a screening tool for toxicology related applications has not yet been fully realized due to several challenges. Principal among these challenges is keeping cells viable in the test cell while collecting IR spectra in situ. Attractive features of FTIR spectroscopy for system-level profiling include rapid, reagentless, non-destructive analysis of complex biological samples, thereby providing unbiased measurements of a biological system in near real-time. The non-destructive nature of FTIR can facilitate collection of detailed cell information as a function of time from a single experiment that defines dynamic chemical bond changes induced by selected stimuli (e.g., nanomatehals, chemical toxins, drugs, and etc.) In live cells. This objective view of system response may be particularly important when the mode of action for the respective stimulus is not known, as is frequently the case for nanomaterials and various chemical entities that overwhelm the capacity of conventional toxicological testing approaches to assess safety. While information encoded by IR-observable changes has yet to be fully understood and transcribed, this technology does have the potential to guide and improve application of global response assays for interrogating biological systems. One potential application is to define where in the IR regime qualitative or quantitative changes in FTIR-observable peaks occur to determine if an experimental system under investigation has been perturbed and then use this information to guide the application of global response assays in a cost-effective manner. This approach would allow interrogation of a biological system at selected times and frequencies that would reflect observable differences in the biological response. This is Important for stimuli whose modes-of-action are unknown and do not exert robust selective pressures on the system, such as cell death. While FTIR spectroscopy has sufficient sensitivity for automated and high throughput: screening, current ATR configurations do not allow for the maintenance and monitoring of live-cells within an ATR/FTIR device in order to utilize this spectroscopic sensitivity. Accordingly, new systems, devices, and processes are needed that provide for monitoring, screening, and measurement of live-cell responses to perturbations over extended periods of time, e.g., over 24 hours.